


Candle Smoke

by defenestratingreason



Category: RWBY
Genre: 100 sentence fiction, Backstory, Canon Compliant, F/M, Kid Fic, Orphans, parental abandonment, thieves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-22 06:22:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6068488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defenestratingreason/pseuds/defenestratingreason
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heroes die. This is a fact of the world. So he makes a decision then and there to never, ever, do anything that could possibly be construed as heroic.</p><p>Roman Torchwick backstory inspired by his speech to Ruby in "Heroes and Monsters"</p><p>Written for a "100 sentence story" assignment in my creative writing class.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Candle Smoke

  1. > _“You’ve got spirit, kid… but this is the real world.”_

  2. > He’s ten years old when he commits his first crime.

  3. > Nothing major, nothing violent – just a pack of cigarettes swiped off the drugstore counter because he’s too young to buy them legally.

  4. > Dad gave him hell last week for coming home empty-handed.

  5. > Sometimes he thinks Dad loves nicotine more than he loves his own son.

  6. > Tonight, for the first time, he understands.

  7. > He stays up all night staring at his long, nimble fingers, turning them every which way under the shattered moonlight filtering through his window.

  8. > His heart is racing and his hands won’t stop _tingling_ and for the first time in his life he feels whole.

  9. > Human.

  10. > Like he knows what he was brought to this world to do.

  11. > Who knew a pack of cigarettes could make you feel so good?

  12. > _“The real world is cold.”_

  13. > He’s sixteen years old when his father kicks him out and leaves him to the mercy of the streets.

  14. > The first night, he’s too drunk to remember much.

  15. > The second night, he’s too high.

  16. > On the third night, he passes out in an alleyway and sleeps for twelve hours until a dog pees on him.

  17. > On the fourth and fifth nights, it rains.

  18. > On the sixth night, it snows.

  19. > On the seventh night, he decides enough is enough.

  20. > He stuffs a loaf of bread inside his coat in plain sight of the cashier, and when that doesn’t work, he takes a few cans of soup and a large bag of rice, and when even that fails to draw the old man’s attention, he trips in front of the door and lets the food go scattering everywhere, the rice sounding so much like rain and looking so much like snow as it explodes out of the bag.

  21. > He could pick the lock on his handcuffs, but he doesn’t.

  22. > It’s the best sleep he’s gotten all week.

  23. > _“The real world doesn’t care about spirit.”_

  24. > As soon as the weather improves, he breaks out of jail.

  25. > It’s easier than he thinks it’ll be, but not as easy as he’d like.

  26. > He’s back on the streets, but this time he’s got a record and a mugshot and a cop whose sole job is to find him and bring him back into custody.

  27. > His days of anonymous pickpocketing are over.

  28. > He decides to embrace notoriety in style.

  29. > He’s in the “hair” section of a local costume shop when he sees her.

  30. > She’s a dainty little thing, no taller than his waist, and she carries herself like a lady, but there’s something about her that’s dangerous, and he feels it deep in his bones just by looking at her.  

  31. > She’s perusing the store’s collection of larger-than-life hair colors, running her finger slowly across bottles with names like _UV Green_ and _Atlantic Blue_ as she makes her way down the aisle.

  32. > She walks like a ballerina.

  33. > Or an assassin.

  34. > She comes to a stop, her finger resting on her chosen hair color, and slowly turns her head to look him in the face.

  35. > He freezes on the spot, completely at the mercy of her contemplation, until she quirks her mouth into a small smile and lifts one finger to her lips.

  36. > The spell is broken, or maybe a new one has kicked in.

  37. > He grabs his bottle and she grabs hers; both bottles expertly disappear into coat sleeves, and then they turn around and walk out of the store together, matching each other step for step.

  38. > Neither of them says a word; he’ll later find out she can’t speak.

  39. > They dye their hair together in the bathroom sink of a condemned apartment downtown.

  40. > He’s _Napalm Orange_ ; she’s _Pretty in Pink_.

  41. > From that moment, they’re inseparable.

  42. > She tells him her story, gradually, over text messages and scrawled notes and finally through a several-page story that reads like a diary entry but is addressed to him instead of the covers that enclose it.

  43. > She used to live in a fancy house with love and sunlight and two beautiful horses named Chocolate Chip and Cookie Dough.

  44. > She loves chocolate ice cream, and her favorite color is pink, and when she was younger she dreamed of being a dancer.

  45. > Her parents, she writes bitterly, were heroes.

  46. > And then everything falls into place.

  47. > _“You wanna be a hero? Then play the part and die like every other hero in history.”_

  48. > Heroes die.

  49. > This is a fact of the world.

  50. > So he makes a decision then and there to never, ever, do anything that could possibly be construed as heroic.

  51. > He’s a crook and a rascal by nature, so it’s a resolution that’s easily kept.

  52. > But this isn’t just about him anymore.

  53. > He’s the head of their little makeshift family now, and he’s got to provide accordingly.  

  54. > It’s time to step up his game.

  55. > He’s eighteen years old when he robs his first bank.

  56. > And his second.

  57. > And his third.

  58. > He buys them a small apartment on the shadier side of town, paying in cash to a man who almost certainly recognizes his face but doesn’t ask too many questions.

  59. > He’s a public figure now, his face splashed on Wanted Posters all over the city, and he knows he should probably be laying low, dye his hair back to black and stop wearing so much eyeliner, but he’s honestly having way too much fun seeing himself painted as a criminal mastermind to care.

  60. > He buys himself a bowler hat and gets her a pretty pink parasol.

  61. > She turns the handle into a sword and sheath so she’s stylish and ready for murder at all times.

  62. > He starts to worry about her health.

  63. > She’s fourteen years old and 4’6”, and doesn’t seem to be growing at all.

  64. > He threatens a doctor for information and finds out that it’s probably a genetic condition, but that certain foods can help boost the growth process.

  65. > She grows an inch on her new diet and then stops, so he mugs a well-dressed preteen heiress and presents his housemate with a shiny, expensive, barely-used pair of high-heeled boots for her fifteenth birthday.

  66. > They fit perfectly.

  67. > She practices stabbing things with stilettos.

  68. > She starts accompanying him on his criminal ventures, and he finds that they’re able to accomplish things as a team that he could never in his wildest dreams do alone.

  69. > He’s flashy and recognizable, but she's a master of silence and disguise, and soon he goes from sole provider to the face and brains of her ghostly operations.

  70. > Her work in the shadows attracts the attention of the city’s criminal underbelly, and the little makeshift family becomes part of a larger community that can be trusted to maybe consider having their backs every once in a while.

  71. > He’s twenty years old when she starts independently hiring herself out as an assassin, and he knows his role as “mentor” is through.

  72. > He’s twenty-three when she crawls into his bed for the first time.

  73. > Twenty-four when they stop trying to fight the inevitable and push their beds together.

  74. > Twenty-seven when he slips a ring onto her finger and swears to love her ‘til the day he dies.

  75. > He’s proud of the life they’ve made.

  76. > _“As for me, I’ll do what I do best. Lie, cheat, steal…”_

  77. > He’s thirty years old when it all starts to fall apart.

  78. > Of course, he doesn’t know that yet.

  79. > In the beginning, it’s just a criminal venture like any other – hired by a mysterious unnamed malefactor who needs a mastermind to carry out certain crucial elements of her plan – without leaving too much information in the hands of any one person.

  80. > But then one job becomes two, and two becomes four, and he gets tired of not knowing who he’s helping.

  81. > When he tries to move on to better paying options, she steps out from the shadows and makes it none too clear that she is not his client.

  82. > She’s his boss.

  83. > He has three options: stay and live, leave and die, or betray her and find himself a widower.

  84. > He decides to stay.

  85. > In the end, it wouldn’t have really mattered either way.

  86. > _… and survive!”_

  87. > He’s thirty-one when he dies.

  88. > The end comes quickly.

  89. > Inevitable, perhaps, all things considered.

  90. > His apartment is gone, lost in an attack that he helped engineer.

  91. > His wife is lost to the wind, thanks to some bright-eyed, sickeningly _good_ little kid who fancies herself the hero of this story.

  92. > This kid will never understand what it’s like to live on the streets, to fight tooth and nail every day just to make it to tomorrow.

  93. > She’ll never understand the kind of decisions he had to make, because she’s surrounded by love and support, and she’ll never understand the thrill of making those decisions, because she’s so busy _caring_ about everyone and everything but herself.

  94. > She’ll never understand that sometimes all you need in life is one thing to keep you grounded, keep you aware of your own humanity.

  95. > She’ll never know what it’s like to love only one person in the entire world, and she probably would never guess that he’s capable of love at all.

  96. > She has no idea that his heart is breaking.

  97. > All that anger, all that fear, pumping through his veins, pouring out of him like blood from an open wound, he’s bound to attract some predators.

  98. > You can only lose so much of yourself in one go before the shadows close in.  

  99. > His last conscious thought before the darkness swallows him whole is of his conviction to live.

  100. > He dies a survivor.





End file.
